As I noted in my post breaking down the 53-man roster, the Titans acquired running back Terrance West from the Cleveland Browns in a trade to fill the power back void created by David Cobb’s calf injury and ensuing trip to injured reserve-designated for return. So, what kind of player is West?
Unsurprisingly, West has a connection to the Titans. He was a pre-draft visitor last year and one of the many candidates to be the running back they chose in the draft. My previous mention of him here came in the 2014 draft visitors post, where I provided this scouting report:
Tremendously productive I-AA back who ran both zone plays and power/counter with some effectiveness. If you don’t like him, you see a big back who runs upright and lacks burst. If you like him, you see a physical runner who has a good feel for the timing of the run game. I like him. Could go in the second to a team that really believes he could be a 20-carry back, more likely third-fifth.
To get a better idea of who West was as an NFL back and how well that brief blurb held up, I wanted some of his play from last year. The Browns had a big disparity in the effectiveness of their run game last year, great in the first five weeks of the season until center Alex Mack was lost for the year, and a lot more struggles after that. I wanted to, and did, watch West in each “half” of the season. To that end, I watched his 15 carry, 54 yard performance in Week 14 against the Colts and his 16 carry, 100 yard performance in Week 1 against new defensive maestro Dick LeBeau’s Pittsburgh Steelers (in that order, since I initially had trouble loading the all-22 for the Steelers game).
A couple notes. First, West was not the Browns’ only back that game, or in most weeks. Ben Tate was the starter at the beginning of the season, and West’s workload Week 1 (he led the team in carries) was mostly a result of Tate’s knee sprain suffered that game. In the late season Colts game, as he did while Tate was hurt and after he was cut, West split the workload with Isaiah Crowell. Crowell and West were good complements, by which I mean they generally succeeded in different ways. Crowell was more of a speed back who made his living on the perimeter, while West was largely a between the tackles player. I did not consider West as a consistent lead back in this analysis, as he was not used that way last year. This is not a big deal, as I do not believe the Titans will use him that way either.
Second, the Browns last year were a Kyle Shanahan team, which means a very heavy zone scheme with few man-blocking plays. Last year, Ken Whisenhunt’s history, and the preseason combined suggest to me that the Titans will include a mix of zone and man in the run game this year. West may have gotten enough power/counter-type runs last year to provide a bit of an update on what I saw in the three games I watched of him at Towson, but I wasn’t going to grind through all 171 of his regular season carries last year to do that. He can run them, but one of the keys to whether and how productive he can be immediately is whether he can run them the way the Titans want them run. Whisenhunt indicated as much in Monday’s press conference.
Third, I only watched West’s rushes. He was not a big factor in the passing game last year, with only 11 receptions (13 targets) on 401 plays. My pre-draft notes on him suggest he had at most limited experience there, as Towson was primarily a running team. He wasn’t Andre Williams, he of 355 rushes and 0 receptions his final season, but most volume backs come out of college, and especially the I-AA level, unschooled and unsophisticated in their pass blocking and route running ability. Just for general comfort reasons, my guess is he’ll start the season fourth in the pecking order in obvious passing situations, behind all of Antonio Andrews, Dexter McCluster, and Bishop Sankey (alphabetical order, not a projected depth chart), and find it hard to move up unless he really impresses Sylvester Croom and company quickly.
Fourth, all the normal film watching caveats apply. I’m sure I missed things that were obvious and/or important. I only watched 31 of his 171 carries. I didn’t have a good feel for the defense, or how the flow of the game was proceeding. I don’t know what the Browns’ calls were, or necessarily what his reads should have been; I like to think I’ve watched enough outside zone to have a basic familiarity with what to look for, but I’m still missing plenty. This is what I saw and think about what I think I saw, not definitive statement of fact.
Only a year removed from college, it comes as no surprise the basics of the scouting report held up. West with the Browns looked a lot like West at Towson. He still looked taller to me than his measure 5092 height, likely a function of running a bit too upright. For that reason, he doesn’t demonstrate as much power as you’d expect from a 225-pound back.
In Football Outsiders Almanac 2015, we had him with 21 total broken tackles, an 11.5% BTKL/touch rate (for comparison, Sankey was at 10.5%). Broken tackles are all-consuming, everything from powering through a linebacker like you’re Marshawn Lynch or making a would-be tackler miss in the open field. West did his best work avoiding tacklers when he had some space to work with; he made more Steelers miss than he did Colts, including eluding Jason Worilds when he should have been dead to rights for a loss of a couple yards. Watching the Colts game, then the Steelers game, I wonder if West had been worn down a bit, not necessarily by the workload (he only had 7 carries the week before) so much as an offensive line that made it hard to find running room. Or maybe I’m just reading too much into things, because he didn’t look hesitant. As I believe I’ve said of Cobb and Shonn Greene before him, backs like that can’t be hesitant or they’re done.
My dominant impression was that West looked like an NFL back, able to take a regular committee role in a run game without looking too out of place. On the whole, though, he lacked any special qualities, which limits his overall upside and should see him featured primarily a between the tackles back. The Browns actually used him on some pitch plays in the games I watched, but teams mostly crashed the edge, leading him to cut it back, and he doesn’t have the speed to turn the corner against NFL defenses. As long as he accepts his likely role, he should do just fine in what the Titans should ask him to do (after last year, I’m not assuming anything about Ken Whisenhunt and running backs).
Of course, that caveat in the last sentence (not the Whisenhunt one, the other) is a big one. The Browns gave up on a player they traded up to draft in the third round last year, and, if the games I watched were any indication, it wasn’t because he was terrible. Instead, the decision to trade him for reportedly just a conditional seventh-round pick was apparently based on his off the field work. If he’s problematic there in Tennessee, the Titans just cut him. I liked West as a player coming out, and still like him, but the drop off from him to one of the guys pretty much available elsewhere (like the just-worked out Jonas Gray, now on Miami’s practice squad) isn’t so great you put up with him if he’s not getting it, even if Cobb isn’t healthy yet.
One obvious question I haven’t addressed is whether West is a better back than Cobb, since they’re substitutes rather than complements and Cobb could be available around midseason. That’s a question the Titans won’t have to address until that time comes, and could easily be rendered moot in either direction by events before then. So, ask me again when Cobb starts practicing.
At the price, I like this deal and the risk for the Titans
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